Oksanen, Reijo
The Gurdjieff Work
Apart from being the elixir for life, water is an ancient symbol of
wisdom. Gurdjieff compared human life to a large river that flows into
two separate streams before entering the vast ocean. He said that you
can just swim with the stream or make efforts to jump over to the other
stream. In the first river you are the slave of the Great Nature inside
and outside yourself. In the second river you are free of the tyrant
that makes you a slave. This tyrant is your own picture of yourself,
your 'I'.'
An Exercise
Part 1 - Sensation. Sit on a chair with the palms of your hands
resting on your knees. Your eyes relaxed and slightly open without
focusing them on anything in particular. Straighten your back. You can
sense the blood circulating in your body. Start by sensing your
forehead and move slowly to sense the eyebrows, eyelids, your nose,
mouth and chin. You may find some tensions while you do this, but you
can relax by sensing more. Continue putting your attention into your
left hand by sensing it going slowly down from the shoulder towards
your hand and when there sense each finger one by one. Come up your
hand without haste and continue the sensing with your right hand in the
same way. Continue sensing the left side of your body going down slowly
to finally arrive to the left foot and up agin without haste dot the
same on the right side of your body. If you feel tense or want to
repeat the whole exercise feel free to do so.
To be aware of the body is a basic exercise and can be used as an 'anchor'.
Part 2 - Attention. Now look at the second-hand of your wrist
watch and follow its movement without straying away for two minutes.
Your attention is likely to stay for some time and then go somewhere.
When the attention is gone just start watching again and keep coming
back this way. The sensation of any part of your body as in the first
part of the exercise will help you. Two minutes is enough. Your
associations, often called thoughts, start going on in your mind. Just
watch them come and watch them go. If possible don't be carried away by
them.
If you find the 'watching of the watch' too easy the chances are that
you are not watching, but only thinking of it. However, if you know
that you can hold your attention uninterrupted on the second-hand you
can go on for about five minutes.
Part 3 - Discussion. Discuss your findings with one of your peers or in a group
afterwards by telling what you experienced and listening (attentively) what your peers
have to say.
Friendly advice: you are not competing with your peers in doing this exercise -
only with yourself!
Background
G. I. Gurdjieff was an extraordinary man. Born in 1866 in Alexandropol
(Guymri) in Armenia from a Greek father and an Armenian mother he
started looking for answers to the 'unexplainable phenomena' that he
constantly came across. This led to many long travels in the middle and
far East. With the men and women who were with him he formed a group
called 'The Seekers after Truth'. The group and what they found is a
legend that Gurdjieff wrote in his second book 'Meetings with
Remarkable Men' (1), which was published in 1963, years after his death, and filmatized by Peter Brook in 1979 (2).
Gurdjieff started to share and teach what he had learned in Moscow and
St. Petersburg around 1912 and during the Bolschevik revolution moved
to Europe and settled in France near Paris in 1922. In 1924 he had a
nearly fatal car crash, which changed his activity: he began to write
and wrote until 1934 and produced three books. His main ideas can be
found in his first book, called 'All & Everything' - 'Beelzebub's
Tales to His Grandson' (3).
He continued teaching to the end of his life and produced many
movements and the music to go with them only some weeks before he died
in 1949.
The teaching has been transmitted directly from the teacher or 'group
leader' to the pupil(s). In the early days Gurdjieff's strictly
instructed that no notes were allowed to be made of his lectures or the
movements, sacred dances and the music played to accompany them.
However, P. D. Ouspensky did make notes in 1915-1918 and wrote them
down to form 'The Fragments', that was shown to Gurdjieff after
Ouspensky died and Gurdjieff accepted their publication as authentic.
This book was published with the name 'In Search of the Miraculous' (4) and the popularity of Gurdjieff's ideas as a philosophy and psychology is mainly due to this work that has sold over 1 mill.
To-day there is a growing interest in serious studies of 'All & Everything', also in the
academic world and some thesis in the universities in the US and UK have been submitted
based on his work. A biography of Gurdjieff came out in 1991, written by James Moore
(5). The Gurdjieff musical,
'Crazy Wisdom' (6) by John Maxwell Taylor was
first performed in February 2002 in Enchita, California. Five new books have come out in
the past few months, including Dr. Sophia Wellbeloved's 'Gurdjieff: The Key Concepts'
(7) that invites for further
studies and is based on the written material available to-day. For further literature
please refer to the Gurdjieff Internet Guide's Books section and internet information in the Link Index.
Simultaneously with the further studies new attempts have been made to make the
teaching more accessible to the people of our time. Gurdjieff used to say that
he wanted to be known as 'a teacher of dancing'. The music and the movements are being
collected and a recent CD-rom (8)
made by Wim van Dullemen in Holland gives specific information on ten movements that can
be studied even at home.
All & Everything Conference
(9) is held yearly in the UK
to promote further studies of the ideas.
Basic Ideas
People on earth have the possibility to become the 'Managing Directors'
of the planet, but have badly neglected this task. Instead of working
together with the surrounding nature and our own nature we have become
alien to both. We live in hypnotic sleep, normally called our waking
state and have only rare glimpses of any higher states of
consciousness. As we are, we are identified with our functions of
thinking, feeling and instict/moving. The result of this identification
is that we are machines governed by outside influences that make the
machine react blindly to impulses from the outside and the inside. We
need to wake up to the 'terror of the situation'.
To see ourselves as we are we can start taking mental photographs and
to observe what is happening. If we attempt to observe we soon find it
to be much more difficult than we could have imagined. The difficulty
is simply that we are 'attempting to lift the plank we are standing
on', i.e. if I am not aware of myself, if I do not have attention, I do
not even remember to observe myself. The 'trick' in self-observation is
to 'remember myself' and if I can, then I can observe.
A sleeping man can wake up by chance, but normally he/she needs an
alarm clock. One alarm clock is not sufficient as we get used to it and
that is why we need someone to invent new alarm clocks. This person
should also keep on disturbing our sleep continuously. This is why a
teacher and a group can help as one of them may well be more awake than
the others and try wake them up.
We do not have just one 'I', but consist of many different and
contradictory 'I's'. Gurdjieff compares us to a Hackney carriage. Our
thinking is like the driver, feelings like the horse and body like the
carriage. Instead of just one passanger, who is the owner and master,
we are hiring the space to anyone who comes and goes as they will. In
the absence of a master the driver dreams of a better life and can not
control the horse; the horse bites and kicks and goes where he wants;
the carriage falls to pieces as it is not taken care of; there is no-on
present to look after them.
Another way of looking at ourselves will show that we consist of two
very different 'groups of persons'. Our Essence, which we were born
with, and our Personality, which we have learned from our surroundings.
Personality, so to say, is a fine collection of the passers by that we
take in our Hackney carriage. Essence hardly enters, having been
suppressed all his life and remained at the level of a little child.
Our possibilities are in making the Personality passive to give the
Essence room to grow.
Apart from psychology Gurdjieff also specified a cosmology based on the
concepts Law of Three forces and the Law of Seven. These are both
included in the Enneagram, that has in the last 30 years become a tool
for analyzing personality and widely used for different purposes. The
original idea is well described by A.G.E. Blake in his book 'The
Intelligent Enneagram' (10).
Everything in the universe is eaten by something and eats something.
This principle is called 'Reciprocal Feeding' and explained in 'All
& Everything'. We humans have three kinds of food: 'bread'
(ordinary food), air and impressions. Our awareness can expand to see
that we are part of the whole, part of the universal feeding system; an
exchange of substances. We can also become aware of our eating in a new
way and try to eat more consciously (not to eat more but to eat more
consciously). This has the effect of changing the whole of our
metabolism. Gurdjieff used to say: 'when eat, then eat!' When receiving
any of the three kinds of food, bread, air or impressions, we can be
aware of it at many different levels of consciousness. At the level of
self-awareness and self-remembering we are more alive: 'everything is
more vidid' and we get more nourishment of all the three different
kinds of food.
Bon Appetit!
(1) Meetings with Remarkable Men (All and Everything)
(2) Meetings with Remarkable Men
(3)Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson (All and Everything/First)
(4)In Search of the Miraculous (Harvest Book)
(5) Gurdjieff: A Biography : The Anatomy of a Myth
(6) Crazy Wisdom: The Life and Legend of Gurdjieff; John Maxwell Taylor; Worldtransformations.com
(7) Gurdjieff: The Key Concepts (Routledge Key Guides)
(8) The Art of the Sacred Movements; Wim van Dullemen; ISBN: 3-9808656-0-6; Gurdjieff-movements.net
(9) All & Everything Conference; http://www.allandeverything.net/
(10) The Intelligent Enneagram
(11) For further information visit Gurdjieff Internet Guide
This article is written for Catalysta.
Catalysta
Contemporary youth have access to vast amounts of information
concerning people and events worldwide, however, the majority of this
interaction is mediated by mass communication providers; only a
fraction of their knowledge comes in the form of interpersonal
exchange. Catalysta addresses this trend by joining high school and
university students from around the world in a forum designed to
strengthen the links between social, economic and environmental issues
in current curricula, and prepare students worldwide for the "global
era" in which they are growing up.
Traditional exchange programs have successfully connected students from
around the world for years, but only small numbers are lucky enough to
participate. Catalysta puts the Internet to work as a tool for
connecting students, and considering one and other's perspective.
Catalysta pursues the potential for empathy and personal awareness in
relation to the exploration of social issues; the pursuit of peace,
global warming, and globalization are sample topics. We are pleased to
present the premiere term of Cataysta, 'Our Water'.
Catalysta’s Spring 2002 pilot semester at the Samuel J. Tilden High
School in Brooklyn, New York was a success. Catalysta premieres online
in the Fall 2002 term. Four schools worldwide will participate. They
will be selected from among schools in India, Italy, Kenya, the U.S.,
and the U.K.